Impulse Creative
A week ago, I was sitting in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center listening to speakers such as Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell, Martha Stewart and Shiza Shahid. I attended sessions on SEO, social media and how HubSpot does their marketing. I had the opportunity to do a water walk in support of Charity: Water, meet Simon Sinek and eat at some of the best food trucks Boston has to offer. If you weren’t there, book your flight and get your tickets right away because this is one conference you don’t want to miss. I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything I learned, but here are my three biggest takeaways from INBOUND 2014:
SEO is changing…and it’s not necessarily in a way that’s making it easy for marketers
SEO. It’s a term marketers love and hate. We’re always trying to get our clients to rank in the search engines, but we struggle more than we care to admit. Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, presented about SEO tactics to love and leave. He made some incredible points, but the one that stuck with me the most was this: SEO is changing, and it’s not necessarily in a way that’s making it easy for marketers.SEO isn’t the same as it was in 2004, and in order to get clients to rank, you need to do more than focus on keywords. In fact, great SEO is more than just “SEO” – it’s content, social media, localization, PR and more. As marketers, it’s our job to figure out which tools will marry our strengths to our opportunities. No one tactic will be right for every client, but it’s essential that as marketers, we’re aware of our potential arsenal.
You need to find the screw in your writing
How many times have you written a blog or article, skimmed over it, made a few edits and sent it off to your editor? We’ve all done it…even myself. And my inner creative writer hates me for it. Don’t get me wrong: it’s essential to write crappy first drafts because it makes us better writers, but sending out that crappy first draft as a final draft is a huge mistake. Everything we send out is a representation of ourselves and the company we work for. However, there’s a missing step between the crappy first draft and the editor: the revision. During that revision, it’s essential that we find the screw in our writing.Whoa. What is the screw?
The screw is the amazing point that’s hiding within your crappy first draft. No matter how scatterbrained your first draft is, there’s an amazing point hiding inside of it. Good ideas are shy, and they like to see other ideas fill up the room first so they can feel confident to show up. During your revision, find the screw in your writing and re-write your blog with the screw in mind in order to make it remarkable!
Come Together. Be Inspired. Be Remarkable.
My biggest takeaway from INBOUND had nothing to do with marketing. Instead, it had to do with passion and inspiration. All of the speakers I listened to had one thing in common: they were inspiring, and their inspiration came from their passion for what they do. Shiza Shahid, cofounder and CEO of the Malala Fund, took a leap of faith when she left her dream job to become an advocate for what she believed in. She knew that everyone deserved an education, and she was determined to make that a reality for anyone who wanted to learn. Shiza reminded us that we’re never too young to become an advocate for change.
During her keynote, Shiza said, “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” We all have the power to make a difference, and we shouldn’t wait for someone else to do it for us. You don’t need all of the answers, and it’s okay to be afraid, but we are stronger than anything we are afraid of. If there’s anything that I learned from Shiza and all of the other speakers at INBOUND it’s that if you’re passionate about something, you have the ability to inspire others – no matter what that passion may be.
